Look To The Skies
by VampedVixen
Summary: Six months after Mal drops Inara off at the training house, she still thinks of Serenity.


Her eyes scanned the horizon of the forest adjacent to the Madressa Companion Training House, though Inara knew it wouldn't be that easy. It wasn't as if she would look up to the sky someday, only to suddenly see the familiar ship in her view, with it's twin firefly engines in full glow. Serenity was gone.

And she was trying to make a living here, on Athena of all places. The training guild on the outskirts of the central planets, actually more of a border planet than anything else. It was part of the most outer range, the farthest she could get and still be in Alliance territory.

She told herself that she was doing it as a favor to those who taught her back at her own training house at Shinon. They'd raised her from the age of twelve to become a highly skilled companion. She was perhaps one of the only who would now be able to turn around the slow learning of the training houses in the far reaches of the blackest of space. They needed someone who would be able to educate those out here looking for a real teacher, one who could make them into true companions instead of common whores who would be taken advantage of and abused. They needed her.

At least someone did.

When she mused on it at length through, she knew that she wouldn't have chosen any other place if she could. Athena was the closest to the boarder planets, the closest to the black, the closest to Serenity-- where she'd left her heart when she left her true home.

It was silly and only made her mad to think of it. Mal hadn't come for her yet, six months to the day that he dropped her off with merely a cordial, business-like handshake. He never would and she knew this in her head, even if her heart hadn't gotten the message yet. It was like she told Kaylee, back when they were packing up her things and she was attempting to hold it all together. "That man doesn't know what he wants."

Kaylee refused to see the logic in her leaving though, almost pleading with her to remain on their ship, in their home. "The Captain wants you to stay."

It was little things like that that ate away at Inara these days, the bits of evidence she still held on to, even now. They made a mess of the tug-of-war that still played out between the emotional and logical sides of her mind, interrupting the process of healing with ruminations that produced no straight-forward easy answers. It was maddening.

Perhaps he cared. Perhaps he didn't.

He didn't know, so she never would.

Both of their duties laid elsewhere. Hers to her companion training, keeping her off-limits to any real relationship. While his lay on the battlefield of Serenity, a man born of a broken heart from a battle that still waged in his mind. They couldn't be anything, ever. Perhaps it truly was as simple as that.

She sighed and took a sip of her chamomile tea, brewed from an ancient plant transported from Earth-That-Was that was supposed to bring about a feeling of peace and serenity. None came and she was started to lose hope in the idea that she might someday be free of this pain.

She kept a good mask around those she taught and those who were her peers here in the guild, but a few were starting to see the cracks in that mask. They talked of secret affairs she once engaged in with a pirate and why she returned to teach. The stories were almost as good as the real thing. He loved her in the stories she heard though, kept her safe from harm and was able to say those word to her. The three every girl longed to hear, whether they were a companion or not. You can't stop silly girlish impulses, even if you have been trained to do so-- not when it was so human to want someone to hold.

Though perhaps if she hadn't turned away, she would have heard those words in reality too. He tried once, or at least she thought he did. That day after Nandi's funeral, when they were both ripped open so raw that their emotions were escaping from Pandora's box.

"Inara, I ain't looking for anything from you." She recalled his words. "I'm just feeling kind of truthsome right now. Life is too damn short for ifs and maybes."

With all her companion training and skills of reading people, Inara knew what he was going to say. He didn't have to lay it out there in the open, it was the elephant they both refused to acknowledge that was tromping around the hallways of Serenity, making a mess of both their lives.

She had stopped him before he went and destroyed anything more, before his words could dig themselves a hole they wouldn't be able to escape. "There's something that I...that I should have done a long while ago. And I'm sorry, for both of us, that it took me this long. I'm leaving."

She'd given him an out, told him that she was leaving and he could have his space now.

And he took it.

He didn't call her back, didn't tell her not to leave, didn't stop her from packing her things and escaping to a world they both knew she wouldn't be able to live in anymore. Not without him. No home was complete these days, none of them felt whole-- save for the one she left on Serenity.

She remembered mentioning some of this story to a friend of hers in the guild, sharing secrets with her in the late hours of the evening. That conversation was probably part of the reason there were so many rumors flying around about her now, but Sabara asked one question during the whole conversation that still circled in Inara's head. "If he said those words you truly wanted to hear and he meant them-- if he broke down and begged you to stay with him-- would it have changed anything?"

"No." Inara replied then with perfected calm, "It couldn't."

She starred at the forest of trees that surrounded the peaceful training house, a fortress around such a monastery environment. It was the wall she'd built around herself, it kept her safe from what was out there, from what she wanted. The worlds were the way they were for a reason, history wrote out their lines and they acted them out the best they could. It couldn't be helped, couldn't be changed.

If that was true, she wondered, why did she still look to the skies for a sign?

-The End- 


End file.
